Transatlantic cash: two stable equilibria

Cash on both sides of the Atlantic: evidence of two different equilibria

October, 2026

In August 2026 the European Central Bank published its third survey on the use of cash by companies in the euro area, based on 8,205 interviews across 21 countries. Three months earlier, the Federal Reserve released its 2026 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, the latest wave of an annual consumer study running since 2016. Read […]

Cash teaches children money basics

The first lesson is a coin: cash and how children learn what money is

October, 2026

On 5 October Spain holds its annual Financial Education Day, this year under the motto “Save. Invest. Advance.”, with the Banco de España, the CNMV and the Ministry of Economy as promoters and a national final of the schools’ financial knowledge contest. Similar initiatives run across Europe, and the consensus behind them is that financial […]

Banknotes

“No one renovates a house they plan to tear down”: the ECB’s new banknotes as a statement of intent

September, 2026

On 23 July 2026, the European Central Bank unveiled ten shortlisted designs for the third series of euro banknotes and opened a public survey that will run until 21 September. The redesign itself is not new — it has been underway since 2022 — but the message the ECB chose to attach to it is. […]

Cost of exceptions

Exceptions have a price: the economic cost of widening the carve-outs from mandatory cash acceptance

September, 2026

Ahead of the second political trilogue on the Single Currency Package on 10 September 2026, the Council Presidency has asked Member States whether the exceptions to mandatory cash acceptance in Article 5 of the legal tender regulation should be expanded, and in which circumstances. Five categories are on the table — sector-specific carve-outs, business-to-business transactions, […]

Fees agreed vs proposed

Who pays for the offline euro? Cash and the digital euro’s compensation gap

September, 2026

The second political trilogue on the Single Currency Package is going on. Among the items on the table, per the Council Presidency’s own agenda, are the compensation model for the digital euro and the exceptions to mandatory cash acceptance. Public commentary on the digital euro’s fee structure has tended to blur what the Council has […]

Regulation & AML

Cash and AML: making sure two parallel policy tracks remain coherent

August, 2026

On 10 July 2027, Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 — the EU Anti-Money Laundering Regulation — becomes applicable across all 27 Member States. One of its provisions establishes a uniform EU-wide ceiling of €10,000 on cash transactions for goods and services, with Member States retaining the option to set lower national thresholds. Several already have: Belgium and […]

Mandatory cash acceptance and exceptions

The Netherlands: mandatory acceptance, rising refusals, and the design of exceptions

August, 2026

In June 2025, the Netherlands passed a mandatory cash acceptance obligation — one of the first in the eurozone. Six months later, on 1 January 2026, the same government introduced a prohibition on cash payments for goods above €3,000. Both measures are now in force simultaneously. De Nederlandsche Bank’s most recent annual survey, published in […]

Employment & Retail Automation

The Effect of Self-Checkout on Employment in Spain

August, 2026

Spain employs, on official figures, 195,800 people as cashiers and ticket clerks (CNO-11 code 55) — the 2025 annual average. It is a workforce four out of five of whom are women (158,800, 81%), concentrated overwhelmingly in retail. And for the first time since the pandemic, that number has ticked down: from a peak of […]